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Two bills are snaking their way through congress at the moment in an attempt by the entertainment industry to clamp down on online file-sharing and piracy.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (or SOPA) in the House is the more famous of the two. Its counterpart in the Senate is PIPA (or the Protect IP Act.) Both bills are controversial, and with good reason.

Many big tech companies oppose the bills. And many more will soon if Reddit has anything to do with it. Major online web hosting giant GoDaddy.com recently learned its own lesson in the power of a boycott after they announced their support for SOPA, a bill that critics say would effectively censor the internet.

Soon after GoDaddy announced its support for the bill, Reddit users went into action, threatening to pull domains from the web host. Others joined in the fun, including Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

The power of the grassroots online can't be underestimated. Whether we're talking about hacker ingenuity or simple boycotts, things happen in real time and as I've noted before, even censorship bills like SOPA won't be able to stop it.

GoDaddy backed off after this barrage of protest and customers threatening to take their money elsewhere. And good for them, I suppose, though there are plenty of other good reasons not to give them your money.

But if hackers and internet junkies can find ways to stop corporations from supporting noxious bills and maybe even put pressure on a few elected officials, that still leaves countless Americans with very little knowledge of these bills. Most Americans aren't great with computers and don't know much about the internet or belong to activist communities online.

All the more important for us to work together to stop the state from clamping down on free speech and free commerce. Reddit is a great example of a site that has become far more than simply a social-networking or link-sharing utility and has grown into a real online community that can get things done.

I really do believe in the power of innovation and human ingenuity. Technology can enable tyrants and bureaucrats to clamp down on our privacy and freedom, but they can just as easily enable hackers and individuals to fight back. The balance between security and privacy, and between property rights and freedom, is not a black and white thing or an easy controversy to solve. I don't think that blunt, far-reaching laws are the right way to combat piracy, however.

And they won't even work. In the end, the only thing that a bill like SOPA will achieve is more government overreach. Piracy will just take new shapes, and the vast majority of Americans will be just that much less free.